News for Healthy Futures
Donate now to double your impact
If you care about homelessness, hunger, or the crisis of childhood obesity, you’ve probably heard a lot of bad news lately.
But here’s some good news: our programs are working.
When you support DC Central Kitchen:
- You’re making nutritious, balanced meals for the families and individuals who live in city shelters while they look for work or permanent housing.
- You’re stocking fresh fruits and vegetables in corner stores in parts of the city where healthy, affordable food is hard to find.
- You’re training men and women to secure good jobs in the culinary industry, giving them the income and stability they need to provide for their families.
- You’re teaching nutrition education lessons for low-income kids in the 10 DC schools where DC Central Kitchen serves healthy, cooked-from-scratch meals every day.
Robin Quivers and her 15 Foundation know that DC Central Kitchen’s programs offer meaningful answers to big problems. Thanks to Robin’s generosity, your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $25,000. Please make your gift now to double your impact!
We Are The Job Creators
This post, republished from The Huffington Post, kicks off our Job Raising Campaign. You can join us in shortening the line and empowering men and women to change their lives. Visit our Crowdrise page and make a contribution today. Your contribution helps us reach our goal of winning $150,000 from the Skoll Foundation. Tell your friends and spread the word.
Lots of smart, good, hard-working people give their time, money, and energy to DC Central Kitchen because they think we’re a great charity. We are thrilled that people support us because they feel we are doing the right thing or the good thing, but we really hope people understand that what we are doing is the smart thing.
For too long those of us in the nonprofit sector have been happy to fit ourselves into the charity model – give us your pennies and we’ll solve your dollar problems – but we have to be honest and say that that simply isn’t getting us to the place we need to be. We may have the heart of a nonprofit, but our brain is all business. In fact, today, we are an $11 million per year business – and our leading product is empowerment. The difference between us and a “regular” business, however, is that business is in it to make money; we’re in it to make change.
At DCCK, our social enterprises, which include the production of nearly 5,000 healthy, scratch-cooked school meals each day and a gourmet catering company that generated $1.3 million in revenue last year, are not separate from our social service programs. Instead, they are extensions of our mission. We operate two busy commercial kitchens here in the District of Columbia, staffed almost entirely with graduates of our Culinary Job Training program. The men and women we train come to us after extended stays in prison cells, at drug rehabilitation programs, or on the welfare rolls. First, we help them get their heads right. Next, we give them tangible skills for work in the culinary industry. Finally, we help them find jobs. Many find those jobs at DC Central Kitchen.
Today, 68 graduates of our program work for us. Every new hire starts at a living wage – in DC, that’s $12.50 an hour, with 100% paid health benefits, life insurance, paid sick leave and a company matched retirement plan. We didn’t start offering these packages because we had lots of money to spare. We did it to model to other employers, nonprofit and for-profit, that they can pay people well, provide great products and services, and still show a profit at the end of the day.
Now, after three years of rapid growth in our social enterprise activities, we have lots of that proof. Our Healthy School Food program is earning month-to-month profits, exceeding student participation targets, and providing schools in low-income DC neighborhoods with higher quality food service than they have ever had. Our catering company saw significant revenue growth in 2012, thanks to our expansion into a new kitchen facility. We’ve even begun delivering fresh produce and nutritious, handmade snacks to 29 corner stores in Washington’s ‘food deserts.’ In just the fourth quarter of last year, those participating retailers topped $10,000 in sales, showing that the residents of these communities will make healthy choices – they just need the opportunity, knowledge, and means to do so.
At DC Central Kitchen, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on local farm products each year, pay living wages, and train men and women that others have written off as helpless, or even hopeless, for real careers. We don’t do these things because they make us feel good. We don’t do them because donors tell us to. We do these things because they are the smartest things we can do in service of our community and our common future.
How We’re Teaching Kids Through Cooking Classes
Make room in that kitchen, mom and dad. Pre-Kindergarten students at Walker Jones Education Campus are learning that you’re never too young to help cook a healthy meal. On Tuesday mornings, three and four year-old students will participate in hands-on cooking lessons in the Walker Jones Food Lab.
Starting in January 2013, DC Central Kitchen’s chefs Ed Kwitowski and Christina Brown along with Katie Nash, R.D., will teach weekly lessons to WJA students simple cooking and baking techniques. The team will use kid-friendly recipes featuring fresh fruits and vegetables in weekly lessons. In early January, students in the first class rolled up their sleeves and learned to make “Smashed Bean Burritos,” mashing beans and salsa in Ziploc bags to fill and bake burritos.
The lessons also give WJA an opportunity to extend its Food Lab, a classroom dedicated to teaching the basics of cooking and nutrition, to the younger students. The Food Lab incorporates the school’s urban farm into its curriculum to educate children about their food sources. Ultimately, DC Central Kitchen and Walker Jones are aiming to encourage students to try new foods and empower them to cook healthy meals in their kitchens at home.
4 Ways Healthy Futures is Working for DC Neighborhoods
Changing Eating Habits
Our innovative and thoughtful way of preparing healthy meals at DC Public Schools has led to solid returns. The kids are eating healthier every day and bringing those healthy habits home.
Building Partnerships with Small Businesses
Through Healthy Corners, we’ve partnered with 30 corner stores in Wards 5, 7, and 8 to provide fresh produce and healthy snacks at affordable prices. Not only are we investing in these stores and providing a new business opportunity, but we’re engaging the store owners to become crucial champions of change in their communities.
We’re also investing in local farms and buying much of our produce locally. Our Farm-to-School initiative engages farmers to become part of the solution by providing much of the healthy produce we serve.
Combating Childhood Hunger by Providing Three Square Meals
Together, our Healthy School Food initiative and Healthy Returns effort, which delivers meals and snacks to after school programs and summer camps, give kids healthy, scratch-cooked meals three times per day. And these meals are packed with fresh local produce, whole grains, and lean proteins.
Educating the Community
With our Truck Farm, school cooking demos, and community outreach efforts, we’re educating the entire community about nutrition. Last year, we educated over 9,800 individuals with hands-on strategies for healthy eating and an additional 2,300 children through the Truck Farm, an innovative traveling edible exhibit that teaches kids where food comes from.
You can be part of this success. Make a contribution this holiday season to promote health and combat hunger in DC neighborhoods.
How We Cultivate Adventurous Eaters
Think back to when you were in school. Did you ever get to try grilled BBQ beef bulgogi? How about curried chick peas, cauliflower gratin, red cabbage coleslaw, roasted beets, whole wheat bread stuffing, or Asia- style Brussels slaw? Before DC Central Kitchen produced meals for DC Public Schools, many of the kids had never tried whole grain pasta or raw kale.
We’ve learned that cultivating adventurous eaters, ones who are willing to give anything an honest try, takes time, repeated exposure, and a little one-on-one attention. And when healthy food is prepared the right way, most kids will give it a try! Kids get really excited about trying a specially prepared sample in an individual cup served to them by one of our chefs!
When the kids learn about a new food they like, they often talk about it at home. They ask their parents to provide the same food they’re getting at school. But if they live far from an affordable grocery store, it’s often hard to make those healthy meals at home. This is why we’ve partnered with 30 DC corner stores to bring many of the fresh ingredients and healthy snacks to their neighborhoods.
We’ve learned through our work at DC Public Schools that most kids want to eat healthy, but they aren’t being exposed to a variety of healthy food prepared in kid-friendly ways. This means going beyond simply providing vegetables as a side, to planning a variety of thoughtfully prepared dishes to give kids a wider palate. By cultivating adventurous eaters, we’re actually setting kids up to eat healthier for the rest of their lives.
You can join us to create brighter futures for DC families. Visit our Donate page and invest in our effort to push nutritional barriers and promote health in DC neighborhoods.
